Henry Ford earned his reputation as an anti-Semite in large part through a weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, that ran from 1920-1927. Every Ford franchise in country was required to carry and distribute it. Among its provocative content, the newspaper published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1925 a San Francisco lawyer, Aaron Sapiro, sued Ford for libel based on content in the Dearborn Independent. Although the lawsuit ended in a mistrial, Ford closed the paper and issued a famous public apology to the Jewish community.
Eighty-five years after the mistrial and apology , the federal libel lawsuit was again the topic of conversation last week in the U.S. District Courthouse for the Eastern District of Michigan when a special book launch was held for Professor Victoria Saker Woeste’s Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech. Co-hosted by the American Bar Foundation, Chief Judge Gerald Rosen, Judge Avern Cohn, and the Center for the Study of Citizenship at Wayne State University, the event was held in the “Million Dollar Courtroom” –the same courtroom where the trial took place in 1927. Woeste chronicles the libel case against Henry Ford for the anti-Semitic articles published in his newspaper Dearborn Independent and the characters involved: Aaron Sapiro, the California co-op Jewish lawyer who filed suit; William H. Gallagher, one of the lawyers who defended him; William J. Cameron, the Independent editor and potential fall-man; Fred L. Black, the newspaper’s business manager who spent two years trying to prove the libelous articles to no avail; Louis Marshall, New York lawyer and president of the American Jewish Committee, who wrote the apology Ford signed; Rabbi Leo M. Franklin, Henry Ford’s neighbor; Senator James Reed, Ford’s attorney, the “silver-tongue orator” who hoped the famous case would lead him to the presidency; and Henry Ford, who was so determined not to testify before the court that he faked an automobile accident. Speakers included Bob Nelson, director of the American Bar Foundation; Chief Judge Rosen, who gave a brief history of the “Million Dollar Courtroom”; Marc W. Kruman, director of the Center for the Study of Citizenship; and Judge Cohn, whose research assistance proved invaluable to Professor Woeste.
